largement of an old daguerreotype of Letitia Hastings at
twenty-four--the year after her marriage and the year before the birth
of the oldest child, Robert, called Dock, now piling up a fortune as an
insider in the Chicago "brave" game of wheat and pork, which it is
absurd to call gambling because gambling involves chance. To smoke the
one cigar the doctor allowed him, old Martin Hastings always seated
himself before this picture. He found it and his thoughts the best
company in the world, just as he had found her silent self and her
thoughts the best company in their twenty-one years of married life.
As he sat there, sometimes he thought of her--of what they had been
through together, of the various advances in his fortune--how this one
had been made near such and such anniversary, and that one between two
other anniversaries--and what he had said to her and what she had said
to him. Again--perhaps oftener--he did not think of her directly, any
more than he had thought of her when they sat together evening after
evening, year in and year out, through those twenty-one years of
contented and prosperous life.

As Jane entered he, seated back to the door, said:

"About that there Dorn damage suit----"

Jane started, caught her breath. Really, it was uncanny, this
continual thrusting of Victor Dorn at her.

"It wasn't so bad as it looked," continued her father. He was speaking
in the quiet voice--quiet and old and sad--he always used when seated
before the picture.

"You see, Jenny, in them days"--also, in presence of the picture he
lapsed completely into the dialect of his youth--"in them days the
railroad was teetering and I couldn't tell which way things'd jump.
Every cent counted."

"I understand perfectly, father," said Jane, her hands on his shoulders
from behind. She felt immensely relieved. She did not realize that
every doer of a mean act always has an excellent excuse for it.

"Then afterwards," the old man went on, "the family was getting along
so well--the boy was working steady and making good money and pushing
ahead--and I was afeared I'd do harm instead of good. It's mighty
dangerous, Jen, to give money sudden to folks that ain't used to it.
I've seen many a smash-up come that way. And your ma--she thought so,
too--kind of."

The "kind of" was advanced hesitatingly, with an apologetic side glance
at the big crayon portrait. But Jane was entirely convinced. She was
average human; therefore,